Corona Virus main thread

[sonyc 5,492]

11 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Have a look at the other thread and the early days of this one, it was a good discussion. Then ask yourself what changed.

Why? Have I added to this problem? I try not to wind people up for a reaction. But if you show me I have, please point me there and I will take responsibility VW.

[ricardo 7,347]

Each to their own but I don't believe in blocking people, let them have their say, its only an Internet Forum after all. People have different views on all sorts of subjects. It would be boring if they didn't.

[Van wink 2,994]

3 minutes ago, sonyc said:

Why? Have I added to this problem? I try not to wind people up for a reaction. But if you show me I have, please point me there and I will take responsibility VW.

I didnt mean you, you are one of the best ones on here

[sonyc 5,492]

I blocked someone once and then missed him! Happily rehabilitated 

[Hairy Canary 668]

11 minutes ago, Crafty Canary said:

Why do people engage with Bill? He is a wind-up merchant and promotes this by adopting a persona in which:

1. He is always right and all knowing.

2. Anyone who contradicts him is a liar.

3. If more than one person contradicts him they are the same person using multiple user names.

4. when events prove unequivocally that he is wrong he disappears as was the case with Brexit.

I have blocked him and have no intention of wasting my time with him in future. 🙂

Blocked him too Crafty after being falsely accused of something I find repulsive. The only poster I have ever blocked and it really didn’t sit comfortably with me at all. However I have to say that the result has been that threads are more interesting, informative and flow so much better without his constant diversions and self aggrandisement.

Edited April 29, 2020 by Hairy Canary

[sonyc 5,492]

Just now, Van wink said:

I didnt mean you, you are one of the best ones on here

Well, thanks. Difficult to read between the lines in emails/posts sometimes.

I think everyone deserves a level of care ....but maybe I focus on others' wellbeing too much etc (which was my job for years so probably explains...)

[Barbe bleu 814]

48 minutes ago, Van wink said:

Dont waste you're life, the exchange earlier will hopefully help you appreciate what you are dealing with, but you already know that😉

Well yes, because I am you and you are me,  but you already knew that.

[ricardo 7,347]

2 minutes ago, sonyc said:

Well, thanks. Difficult to read between the lines in emails/posts sometimes.

I think everyone deserves a level of care ....but maybe I focus on others' wellbeing too much etc (which was my job for years so probably explains...)

It can get rumbustious on here at times with people who have strong views but I sincerely hope nobody feels I hold malice towards them personally.

[sonyc 5,492]

The old saying goes..."you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar"

[Barbe bleu 814]

45 minutes ago, T said:

OK so now UK is capturing care home deaths iike Germany so more comparable basis. Bottom line is UK has 26k tested deaths and Germany has 6k tested deaths and Germany is testing more than UK so capturing more deaths than UK.  The likes of Italy and Spain aren't capturing care home deaths in their figures though so does still suggest UK tracking other major coutries in Europe but that there are lessons to be learnt from Germany. I know some people hate being compared to Germany for whatever personal issues they have but surely lives are more important and the UK should be learning lessons from other countries who have performed better and don't have significant excess deaths. . 

I'm not sure that anyone minds being compared to Germany. It's as valid a comparison as Italy, Spain or France.

 

[Creative Midfielder 1,985]

11 minutes ago, sonyc said:

I blocked someone once and then missed him! Happily rehabilitated 

Must confess that I've blocked several and don't miss them at all.

Whilst I agree with the sentiments that @ricardo just expressed (as he has in the past) that having a range of views posted and discussed is rather the point, there are a small number of posters whose posts are so narrow, predictable and repetitive that there is no real discussion to be had with them. There are also a few who seem to think that copying and pasting huge chunks of rubbish from fake news sites and other dubious sources is a good way of expressing their 'views'.

I'm afraid IMO these are total time wasters and I find the board far more interesting and much less time consuming since I've filtered them out. The people worth listening to, whatever their views, are those that can articulate their own thoughts and are prepared to discuss them - the people that just want to chant slogans, propogate fake news or simply wind others up I can happily manage without.

[ricardo 7,347]

Downward trend more obvious.

[Barbe bleu 814]

11 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

Must confess that I've blocked several and don't miss them at all.

 

I agree with all of this.

Everyone is now wondering if they are on the blocked list....

[......and Smith must score. 1,336]

27 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Well yes, because I am you and you are me,  but you already knew that.

FAO City 1st :

*  " I am he as you are me and we are all together

........Umpa, umpa stick it up your jumper "

* With apologies to The Beatles, I Am The Walrus, 1967

 

 

 

 

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

1 hour ago, Herman said:

Thanks, it's been frustrating that people would happily cling to a terribe bit of puff-piece journalism, sensible people that I still have a modicum of respect for as well. Bllomberg are normally better than that too. It may even turn out to be true but the way it has been written, and pounced upon, is frankly embarrasing.

Yes, it isn't at all clearly sourced, although one can understand why that might be so, for good journalistic reasons and bad! But it certainly cannot be taken as anything like proof that Cummings was all along in favour of a lockdown. Cobra had been meeting since January and all through February (we know this because the prime minister wasn't attending...) and it is  a far assumption then that SAGE was meeting all that way through as well, to advise Cobra.

So Cummings arguing for a lockdown at a meeting on March 18 is hardly proof that he had always wanted a lockdown. He could very well, as is rumoured to have been the case, initially been in favour of what one could crudely call a non-lockdown herd immunity approach, and later changed his mind. Or, which is very plausible, decided the original plan (which sounds to be very roughly what Sweden has done) was political suicide in UK terms.

And since Cummings was only as far as we know arguing for a lockdown two days AFTER Johnson had announced just that could - only could - fit in with the notion that he had changed his mind. What it certainly does not do is prove he had all along wanted a lockdown.

[Rich T The Biscuit 562]

Can someone please tell me how block seeing posts?

[PurpleCanary 5,554]

46 minutes ago, Van wink said:

I didnt mean you, you are one of the best ones on here

Now you're just damning him with faint praise...😻

[Monty13 2,229]

1 minute ago, PurpleCanary said:

Yes, it isn't at all clearly sourced, although one can understand why that might be so, for good journalistic reasons and bad! But it certainly cannot be taken as anything like proof that Cummings was all along in favour of a lockdown. Cobra had been meeting since January and all through February (we know this because the prime minister wasn't attending...) and it is  a far assumption then that SAGE was meeting all that way through as well, to advise Cobra.

So Cummings arguing for a lockdown at a meeting on March 18 is hardly proof that he had always wanted a lockdown. He could very well, as is rumoured to have been the case, initially been in favour of what one could crudely call a non-lockdown herd immunity approach, and later changed his mind. Or, which is very plausible, decided the original plan (which sounds to be very roughly what Sweden has done) was political suicide in UK terms.

And since Cummings was only as far as we know arguing for a lockdown two days AFTER Johnson had announced just that could - only could - fit in with the notion that he had changed his mind. What it certainly does not do is prove he had all along wanted a lockdown.

It seems pretty obvious what happened to me Purple.

Cummings is a populist, he was happy to follow the scientific advice until it started to seem people had turned on the idea and there were more and more calls why we weren’t locking down like other countries.

I imagine his only reason to push for it was because of the continued bad optics of us not.

[Daz Sparks 1,150]

5 minutes ago, Rich T The Biscuit said:

Can someone please tell me how block seeing posts?

Hover cursor over the name of the poster, you will see at the bottom of the box there 3 actions, message, ignore user and find content.

[Van wink 2,994]

6 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

Now you're just damning him with faint praise...😻

Well not my intention I can assure you 

Edited April 29, 2020 by Van wink

[ricardo 7,347]

9 minutes ago, PurpleCanary said:

 

And since Cummings was only as far as we know arguing for a lockdown two days AFTER Johnson had announced just that could - only could - fit in with the notion that he had changed his mind. What it certainly does not do is prove he had all along wanted a lockdown.

Could you knit me a scarf like that please.😉

[Rich T The Biscuit 562]

4 minutes ago, Daz Sparks said:

Hover cursor over the name of the poster, you will see at the bottom of the box there 3 actions, message, ignore user and find content.

Thanks 👍

[Creative Midfielder 1,985]

45 minutes ago, Rich T The Biscuit said:

Can someone please tell me how block seeing posts?

Just click on your user name, top right of page, and select Ignored Users from the drop down list.

[Van wink 2,994]

Very interesting analysis of hospitalised patient outcomes which I have pasted in full as its behind a paywall. If you told people that for those hospitalised it was as lethal as Ebola there may be less willing to ignore social distancing

Covid-19 death rates are comparable to ebola for hospital cases, NHS finds

 

Rhys Blakely, Science Correspondent

Wednesday April 29 2020, 5.00pm, The Times

Ebola was first identified in 1976 in what was then Zaire and is a rare but highly dangerous and much-feared virus

BAZ RATNER/REUTERS

More than a third of NHS patients ill enough to be admitted to hospital with Covid-19 have died, a rate comparable to that seen in ebola wards in Africa, scientists said today.

Researchers gathered data from almost 17,000 patients admitted to 166 NHS hospitals between February 6 and April 18.

By that time 49 per cent had been discharged alive, 33 per cent had died and 17 per cent continued to receive care. The study is continuing and the scientists behind it said they had found Covid to be a complex disease quite unlike other respiratory viruses. The details of how it kills people were still unclear, they said.

“It's a common misconception, even today, that Covid is just a bad dose of the flu,” Calum Semple, a professor in outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool who is leading the study, said. “I'm going to choose my words very carefully here: Covid is a very serious disease.

“Despite the best supportive care that we can provide, the crude case fatality rate for people who are admitted to hospital – that is, the proportion of people ill enough to need hospital treatment who then die – with severe Covid-19 is 35-40 per cent, which is similar to that for people admitted to hospital with ebola.

“People need to hear this and get it into their heads because the reason the government is keen to keep people at home, until the outbreak is quietening down, is that this is an incredibly dangerous disease.”

The study followed patients for 14 days. Some of those receiving care were expected to die, bringing the case fatality up from the 33 per cent reported in a paper released yesterday to somewhere between 35 and 40 per cent, Professor Semple said.

He stressed that Covid-19 was not as dangerous as ebola for everyone who caught it. The vast majority “do not come into hospital and will be at home with a very unpleasant flu-like illness with a severe chesty cough and myalgia [muscle pain] and a runny tummy,” he said.

However, he said that social distancing remained necessary for the time being and he had been frustrated by “egregious examples of selfishness, where people think it’s okay to meet up in the park”.

Ebola, first identified in 1976 in what was then Zaire (and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo), is a rare but highly dangerous virus. It can cause fever, body aches, diarrhoea and sometimes bleeding. Professor Semple said that cases could also be mild.

The new study, the largest conducted in Europe, confirmed several previous findings: Covid-19 is more dangerous for older people and men fare worse than women. However, it found symptoms to be far more diverse than the cough and fever that the public had been asked to look out for.

Symptoms came in three clusters: respiratory (cough, sputum, sore throat, runny nose, ear pain, wheezing and chest pain); systemic (myalgia, joint pain and fatigue); and enteric (abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea).

The study has not yet been peer-reviewed but Professor Semple said a preliminary analysis of the data suggested that worse outcomes seen among some ethnic minorities could probably be attributed to social deprivation rather than underlying biological causes. “Ethnicity in itself is not what's causing poor outcomes, but rather people from black and other ethnic minorities are having poor outcomes because of their social circumstances,” he said.

The analysis also showed that a large number of Covid-19 patients admitted to hospital died on a ward and had not been taken to an intensive care unit. More than 80 per cent of those admitted had remained on a ward. Of those, 31 per cent had died.

“The purpose of intensive care is to give people a chance of meaningful survival, of returning to a quality of life that they would want. And in many cases intensive care simply isn’t able to offer that,” Kenneth Baillie, of the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, said.

Decisions had been made by weighing the needs of each patient and had not been dictated by the availability of intensive care beds, the researchers said.

The median age of the patients included in the study was 72 and for those who died it was 80. The median duration of symptoms before admission was four days. The median duration of a hospital stay was seven days.

The most common underlying health conditions were chronic cardiac disease (seen in 29 per cent of patients), uncomplicated diabetes (19 per cent), non-asthmatic chronic pulmonary disease (19 per cent) and asthma (14 per cent). However, almost half of the patients had no reported underlying illness.

“Hospitalised cases of children under the age of 18 account for less than 2 per cent . . . those under the age of five account for far less than 1 per cent,” Professor Semple said.

Peter Openshaw, professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London, and co-lead of the study, said: “From the point of view of the immunology, the disease is a rich and complex one. Every day we’re learning new things about it, new tricks that it seems to deliver, new ways in which it challenges our management.”

Coronavirus in numbers
Study of NHS patients

72 — The median age of patients admitted to hospital

80 —The median age of those who died

0.8 per cent of patients were were aged under five and 1.4 per cent were under 18

60 per cent of patients were male. “Those who have poor outcomes are more often elderly, male and obese,” the report says.

88 per cent of those who died had an underlying illness

But 47 per cent of those admitted into hospital had no underlying condition

For patients who received care on a general ward, 55 per cent were discharged alive, 31 per cent died and 14 per centremained in hospital.

For those admitted to critical care 31 per cent were discharged alive, 45 per cent died and 24 per cent continued to receive care.

61 — median age of those on ventilation. Only 20 per cent had been discharged alive by April 4, 53 per cent have died and 27 per cent are still receiving care. By contrast, for influenza patients ventilated in ICUs in 2009 the death rate was 31per cent

The case definition of cough and fever, if strictly applied, would miss 7 per cent of hospitalised patients

4 per cent of patients presented with only stomach problems or other intestinal symptoms

Pregnancy was not associated with a higher risk of mortality, unlike influenza. The share of pregnant women mirrored the proportion in society.

[ricardo 7,347]

VW, I have changed my mind about going out for a walk after reading that.

[Van wink 2,994]

5 minutes ago, ricardo said:

VW, I have changed my mind about going out for a walk after reading that.

Sets a bit of context for those of us who are probably more vulnerable, still in the midst of this pandemic I'm sure a little EPL would be a good wheeze (excuse the pun)

Edited April 29, 2020 by Van wink

[Rock The Boat 1,325]

5 hours ago, Aggy said:

How do they resign? It’s an invite-only group, the membership of which changes depending on what the emergency is that they’re discussing.

They send a letter to the PM saying ' I resign' 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

2 hours ago, ricardo said:

VW, I have changed my mind about going out for a walk after reading that.

How about a walk behind closed doors?

[Rock The Boat 1,325]

5 hours ago, Badger said:

Agreed but that is not really the point - the issue is whether the govt "followed" the advice or tried to steer it.

I don't expect we will have a definite answer to that question until there is  post-pandemic inquiry. 

But we can.say that whatever happens the government of the day will own it. 

[Badger 2,405]

14 hours ago, ricardo said:

Well the thrust of the Guardians article was that they actually tried to frustrate it.

The Guardian's article may well have been wrong - if the reports about Cummings trying to hurry the committee are correct, it certainly is. However, if the Cummings article is correct, it also means that the govt's case that is was merely "following the science" was deliberately misleading.

To my mind, the govt telling lies about whats guiding its actions is a bigger story than a newspaper getting "an exclusive" wrong. Of course, it is just as possible that the Cummings story is incorrect. We don't really know yet and might not for years, if ever.